The Portrait Of The Lady

Answers

CONSOLIDATE

A1.

1. The narrator’s grandmother was short, fat and slightly bent with wrinkles crisscrossing her face. Her
silvery hair was untidy around her face that was puckered. She looked very old in a beautiful kind of
way.

2. The grandmother did not like what they taught at the school in the city because there was no
teaching about God and the scriptures.

3. During the ‘happiest half-hour of the day’ the grandmother fed the sparrows little pieces of bread.

4. The grandmother’s daily routine changed when she shifted to the city because she no longer dropped
the narrator to school.

5. When grandmother died the sparrows came and sat around her in silence, refusing to eat the bread
the narrator’s mother gave them.

A2.

1. a. The ‘she’ is the grandmother.

b. It was hard to believe that she had had a husband because as a child the narrator could not imagine
things he had not seen about people in his life.

c. Her husband wore a big turban and had a long white beard. He wore loose fitting clothes and looked
very old.

2. a. The narrator thought his grandmother would be upset because he was going away for five years to
study and he wasn’t sure his grandmother would be alive when he returned.

b. The grandmother was neither upset nor sentimental, coming to the station to see him she muttered
prayers over his head.

c. The narrator took as the ‘last sign of physical contact’ with his grandmother the moist kiss she
planted on his forehead.
3. a. The ‘she’ being referred to in the sentence is the grandmother.

b. Instead of praying she collected the women of the neighbourhood and drummed out on an old drum
until her family stopped her for fear she was straining herself.

c. The next morning she fell ill.

A3.

1. The feeling is one of sadness. This is a good exercise for students to reread the text carefully and focus
on the feelings it evokes.

2. The sparrows did not eat anything the day the grandmother died because they were mourning.
Students need to write an extended answer.

A4. Many characteristics of grandmother are mentioned in the text. Students will write the most
obvious ones but there are some that are only hinted at and the better answers will incorporate those
as well.

B. Compound words in the text: Grandmother, mantelpiece, criss-cross, spotless, breakfast, spinning
wheel, sunrise, sunset, neighbourhood, homecoming.